Hours after letting go coach Guy Boucher, Tampa Bay faced a must-win game against division-leading Winnipeg and lost to the Jets 3-2 in front of an announced sellout crowd of 15,004 at MTS Centre.

Bryan Little, Dustin Byfuglien and Tobias Enstrom scored goals for Winnipeg, while Ondrej Pavelec made 23 stops for the victory.

Steven Stamkos scored his league-leading 22{+n}{+d} goal on a second-period power play and Cory Conacher picked up his ninth of the season. Cedrick Desjardins, making his second start, took the loss while making 21 saves.

Tampa Bay finished a crucial road trip with three consecutive losses and will return home presumably with a new coach behind the bench Tuesday.

But with assistant coaches Dan Lacroix, Martin Raymond and Steve Thomas running the bench on Sunday, things ended the same way many of the previous games have this season — and in a similar fashion.

The Lightning came out hard, showed drive and created some quality chances. But Pavelec was the difference early on, holding Tampa Bay at bay during the early surge with several saves in tight in the first period.

The Jets took advantage of one of the few chances they created in the first when Stamkos was in good defensive position in the slot, but had the puck bounce on him and Blake Wheeler was able to pop it over to Little, who had a clear shot to put the puck past Desjardins at 14:02 of the period.

Byfuglien then made it 2-0 with a power-play goal 2:35 into the second.